Is it possible to pinpoint the turning point (in the allies favour) of WW2?

Battle of the Bulge in Germany.

stahp

Any particular damning instance?

1943

Well you can rightly say the war was lost for the Axis from the start, but to point to specific times when the initiative shifted from the Axis to the Allies would be the second battle of Kursk for the Eastern Front, D-Day for the Western Front, and Midway for the Pacific Front.

To get more into it, Stalingrad was a massive shift in relative power on the East, and the Germans lost all western flexibility once North Africa fell to the Allies. They became even more restricted when Italy was invaded, and Italy's subsequent capitulation. They assumed a defensive formation but the rough terrain made it far less of an issue for them.

D-Day completely shitfucked the Germans because it even further divided their forces. They were simply unable to launch further offensives on either front without neglecting the other front, and the increasing pressure of the Russians meant any men or materiel they had to allocate to the West meant another 10 miles lost East. Kursk was probably the biggest turning point, with Stalingrad being the biggest power swing, D-Day was just kicking the Germans when they were down.
The Japanese never really had a significant advantage in the first place, but they very rapidly lost their balance of power quite early in the war. The distance and logistics necessary to defeat Japan, combined with their stubborness dragged the war on long after they had lost all chance of victory.

What? The Germans executed a liberal offensive on the Western front that exhausted precious resources.

If we're discussing turning points in the war, I would defend the Bulge to be one of the final points that lead to an Allied victory.

NOt him, but this was after they had been driven back to the Rhine on the Western Front, the Vistula on the Eastern Front, were bleeding manpower hourly, and being outbuilt by all of their major adversaries.

If Germany hadn't executed the Ardennes offensive, they still would have lost. Hell, it's hard to even measure how much it slowed things down or sped them up.

You make a great point. I shouldn't assume that if the Germans played a more conservative game that they could've, at least, drawn out the war.

Moscow/failure of Barbarossa.

The largest and most dangerous strategic offensive of the war gets stopped, and by that time the US is already the "arsenal of democracy" firmly on its way to becoming a full-fledged active participant. No way out for the Germans against the combined economic, industrial and military might of its enemies.

Unlikely.
They inflicted heavy losses on the Americans but at best they drag the war on another week by playing defensive. But being defensive doesn't win wars at all, Germany needed to win offensively to win the war.

Of course it was a pipe dream by that point, but still. They collapsed very very rapidly, the attrition they faced over the next several months far outstripped their losses and their inflicted casualties, and the crushing blows largely came from the East anyways.

when poland didn't join the axis

pearl harbor is what did it.

no one would have approved of FDR's scheming with soviet communists to kill their fellow germans if pearl harbor hadn't been bombed

also, enslaving the european continent economically would have been off the table.

really, the US was teh crucial actor. our population and industrial power was greater than all of western europe and russia combined

these are also important

>Europe
December of '41 really. The stalling of the German offensive until the spring of '42 gave the Soviets enough of a breath that there was no way the Germans could claim victory. Sure, massive gains were made in the South, but they were offset by either Soviet gains or stalemate in the north.

High water mark: Stalingrad

>Pacific
Most will say Midway, but Midway was really a set up from Coral Sea so.... the Battle of Coral Sea.

High water mark: Guadalcanal

I'm of the opinion that the offensive dragged things out considerably. The ardennes offensive undermines any claim that in 44-45 the German Army was fighting to hold off the Soviets, to lose to the Americans.

It took up a month stalling the offensive, and moved around over 20 divisions. But the biggest thing was that it was a spoiler offensive. The Americans were prepared to launch an offensive into German soil, and Ardenes disrupted their planning, their supplies, etc. They would have been hit even harder if they had played a defensive game. At that point, German defenses held no danger, and no hope of holding against an American offensive.

>heavy losses
>less than 90,000 casualties of which less than 20k were fatal
>heavy losses
Yeah, nah.

Not him, but it DID drag out the war a bit just as the failure of Market Garden had. Similarly, it failed because of British tactical decisions. When the German offensive began, it had thrown everything into the spearhead and neglected to protect its flanks. Patton and Bradley had every intention of taking the Third Army and creating what would have been the second biggest encirclement of the Western Front. However, since Monty had dealt with similar counteroffensives in North Africa he was given command of the defense and ordered the Third Army to turn around in order to counter attack the spearhead head on which is what we did.

Lessons to be learned from the ETO: Don't fucking let the British make decisions. They drag the war out.

>no one would have approved of FDR's scheming with soviet communists to kill their fellow germans if pearl harbor hadn't been bombed
Lend Lease started the day the Germans invaded the Soviet Union.

no

lend lease was a big step, but FDR was a fucking communist and aiding the war directly without being attacked would have made it more obvious

Wake island victory for US navy was the turning point for the Pacific theatre.

As for Europe, I'd say pick between Stalingrad, or d-day. Then again, if the Germans never opened an eastern front or had won the war against the Soviets and Stalin totally capitulated, D-day may have been a failure.

The axis powers wouldn't have ever beaten the USA or set foot on our shores, but without those key turning points in the war, much of china, southeast asia, possibly Australia, and the whole of western europe and a lot of eastern Europe would have been under axis control.

The real turning point was Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain. The only way for the Axis to reach any palatable conclusion to the war was to knock out Britain early on.

Kursk.

Kill this Stalingrad meme. It was the first serious bloody nose for the German Army no doubt, but lets pause for a second and consider that it took more then a defeat of one army when the Wehrmacht had mobilized 13 million men by the end of the war. In fact, things wern't looking all that bright for the Soviets until Kursk.

Shortly after Stalingrad, Hitler lost almost all his tasste for being involved in the decision making of the war. Moodily he told OKH to do whateer the hell they wanted and went on vacation.

Free of Hitler, the General Staff went back to conducting a war that featured the Soviets on the receiving end of an ass raping. This Cumulated with Erich von Manstein's destruction of 50 Soviet Divisons at Karakov.

Astounded by the victory, Manstein took some time out to figure out what the hell was going on with the Soviet Army and came to two conclusions. They were overcondient and Stalin was starting to make the same mistakkes as Hitler had. He was clutching the leash too tightly.

So Manstein being Manstein, he came up with a plan. He would pull backhis forces and tighten the lines, this idea would be passed along to the other Army Group commanders and they would permit the Soviets to take too much ground, too fast, spread out thin and then engage in pincer movements. The goal being 1943 was the year of blunting the Soviet Army and 1944 the next big offensive.

Then came the bitter irony. Hitler's confidence had returned after see all these great successes in the east. He took one look at the backhanded attacks, pointed to Kursk, and told Manstein that was where they would launch the 1943 summer offensive.

And just like that the war was officially lost.

The war in Europe was basically won by the end of 1942. Just death rattles after that.

And to add to this: At Stalingrad, the Germans lost manpower, which was regrettable, but quickly replaceable. At Kursk, they lost tons equipmen tand armor which was much more valuable.

>lose five hundred tanks and a thousand planes at stalingrad
it's ok nothing to see here totally fine
>lose a thousand tanks and a thousand planes during op citadel
OMG TOTALLY DECISIVE GUISE

pls stop the memetics

1942
/end

Compared to 800 tanks at Kursk? I said Stalingrad was a bloody nose. It's just not the death knell of the Eastern Front.

>At Stalingrad, the Germans lost manpower, which was regrettable, but quickly replaceable

That's kinda an understatement

The turning point of the allies was when Germany declared war on Poland. There's no logical way to win the war from that day on, unless Soviet were fighting the allies, which would never happen.

>Pearl Harbor for the Pacific. Seriously what were the japs even thinking?

Grabbing half Asia, especially oil production areas in modern day Indonesia, Malaysia and Bruinei, before US can act and then negotiate peace treaty on favorable terms.

If they would have started attacking Dutch East Indies, British Borneo, British Malaya and French Indochina without disabling US Navy, US would have attacked Japanese as Japan would have become Energy independent and US would have lost essentially all leverage it had with Japan and almost all influence in Asia.

>D-Day
>Implying the war hadn't been decided for atleast 2 years at this point

el alamein battle or Stalingrad

I'd back this. But altogether Hitler's obstinate refusal to allow retreats most of the time, even when done in order to launch counterattacks, assured the war in the east would be a failure. IIRC Antony Beevor's Stalingrad suggests that a rapid withdrawal/breakout could have been acheived had Von Paulus been allowed to attempt one in the opening days of Operation Uranus.

Peace with Britain

>which was regrettable, but quickly replaceable

You can't replace the experienced troops that were lost at Stalingrad.

That would've been impossible considering the fact that Britain said they'd go to war if Germany went after poland.

The failure of the Battle of Britain, followed by the failure of Operation Barbarossa threw The Wehrmacht onto the defensive. The Battle of Midway threw Japan's chances down the drain. But really Japan's entire campaign was standing on a rather weak foundation to begin with.

/thread

>thinking it wasn't decided since september 1939

Dunkirk, Kursk, Stalingrad.

Great Britain managed to scurry away in time at Dunkirk because Hitler made the wrong choice.

Hitler ignoring his advisors and gunning for Russia resulted in the disastrous losses at Kursk and Stalingrad that mortally crippled the Germans supply and manpower-wise.

>Great Britain managed to scurry away in time at Dunkirk because Hitler made the wrong choice.

Retard.

Even if the entire BEF is wiped out, the loss of ten or so divisions won't cripple the British, and it's unlikely to force them to the negotiation table. You still can't do a sealion without air advantage or a fleet capable of transporting assets over.

Not to mention the halt order was asked for by the ground commanders on the scene, what with having sustained almost 50% operational losses and needing a day or two to rest and refit. And of course, going after dunkirk gives the French more time to get their line in order, which would be a very bad thing.

Stop reading pop history and read real history.

>Is it possible to pinpoint the turning point (in the allies favour) of WW2?

Pearl Harbour and the subsequent German dow against the USA.

I completely disagree with this. The whole idea of an elastic defence sounds great because of what Manstein did at Kharkov in 1943, but there are a lot of glaring issues.

-You need to have a good enough idea of what the Soviets are planning, where they will strike and with how much force. Something which the Germans blatantly failed to do in before Uranus (not Mars though), and again they gravely understimated Soviet reserves for the Kutuzov/Rumiantsev attacks, as well as completely falling for a diversion offensive further down south. A purely reactive stance would be taking huge gambles on guessing right, and spreading out your panzerdivisionen would just dilute their strength.

-A related point: what if the Soviets decide to launch their attacks in several locations at once? They did it with Mars and Uranus (Mars was a disaster though), and with Bagration.

-Not all terrain is good for the kind of Manstein masterstroke of early 1943. Ukraine is a tank commander's dream, the forests and marshes near Leningrad not so much. A well-planned offensive would make a mockery of the "but i can always get my panzers back in time to sort everything out" idea.

-Kharkov is one of Stalin's last glaring mistakes. After it, despite being hellbent on a general summer offensive ("The germans are finished, let's kick them out of the USSR"), he listens to his generals and accepts the idea of waiting for a German attack and then punishing them. Even for Uranus, he let Zhukov delay the start date several times, on his own initiative. Kharkov was the moment where Stalin and others like Vatutin definitively learned their lesson.

-Is dragging things out really a good idea for Germany? It's starting to gear up for total war, but even then the Allies would completely outproduce them. A limited-scale attack (Germany can't do stuff like Fall Barbarossa or Blau anymore) allows Germany to use the initiative Manstein had won back in Kharkov, and potentially score a good win.

Pacific theater was literally a matter of time, the Japanese had no shot of winning against the US even without the atomic bombs, the whole notion of their war was complete retardation

When Germans failed to capture Moscow or possibly bit earlier when Winter War ended.

Moscow is pretty simple case, logistics. Most of Soviet major railways have one end at Moscow. Fighting a war with non-existent logistics is pretty hard.

Winter War is bit more complicated and related to Anglo-French plan to "help" Finland. Real goal was to send a token expeditionary force to Finland while occupying small parts of northern Norway and Sweden that purely coincidentally included main source of iron ore for Germans. UK engaged in combat against Soviets might have made later German invasion bit worse as UK and US might be much less willing to supply Soviets.

>Is it possible to pinpoint the turning point (in the allies favour) of WW2?
The Polish attack on German radio station.

Traffic could be rerouted. Your map doesn't show all the railways.
You seriously didn't think there were only like 10 rail lines in Russia, did you?

>D-Day

War had long since turned against Germany's favor. That's why D-Day succeeded.

>Hiroshima

The Japs had been losing for the past three years.

Germany: Lost cause from the start

Japan: Pearl Harbor (le sleeping giant meme)

>Grabbing half Asia,
>half Asia
>Malaysia, Indonesia, and Burma
Geography isn't your strength I gather.

>Traffic could be rerouted. Your map doesn't show all the railways.

It shows main lines. Minor lines are considered minor... usually due to low capacity.

Reading isn't yours. Half Asia, few priority areas.

Malaysia is especially kinda relevant for reasons that are completely unrelated to oil in region. It was back then and still is one of busiest shipping routes in the world.

>Half Asia, few priority areas.
Half of something = few priority areas? English is obviously something you are still in the process of learning.

If D-Day failed (which it could have) it would've been a huge setback for the western allies, and probably would've meant a more significant Soviet victory.

So I suppose if you include the Soviets in the allies then yeah, D-Day doesn't matter so much. If you consider the western allies and the soviets co-belligerants but not really allies with one another (considering how sour relations were) then D-Day is significant.

Grabbing half Asia, especially some parts. Only thing that kinda implies is that in grabbing half Asia there were certain priorities.